The Pines

The waves tell of ocean spaces,

Of hearts that are wild and brave,

Of populous city places,

Of desolate shores they lave;

Of men who sally in quest of gold

To sink in an ocean grave.

The wind is a mighty roamer;

He bids me keep me free,

Clean from the taint of the gold-lust,

Hardy and pure as he;

Cling with my love to nature

As a child to the mother-knee.

But the stars throng out in their glory,

And they sing of the God in man;

They sing of the mighty Master,

Of the loom His fingers span;

Where a star or a soul is a part of the whole,

And weft in the wondrous plan.

Here by the camp-fire's flicker,

Deep in my blanket curled,

I long for the peace of the pine-gloom

When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled,

And the wind and the wave are silent,

And world is singing to world.

THE PINES

We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;

The grey moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines,

And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam

shines.

On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions

massed;

We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast;

From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast.

To the niggard lands were we driven; 'twixt desert and foe are we

penned.

To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend;

Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end.

Ours from the bleak beginning, through the æons of death-like sleep;

Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing

deep;

Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier-creep.

Wind of the East, wind of the West, wandering to and fro,

Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know

The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last

to go!

We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar;

The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash

and roar;

But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.

We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap

we lie;

From the white foam-fringe where the breakers cringe to the peaks

that tusk the sky

We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a

golden eye,--

Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free:

Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see;

A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.

Sun, moon and stars, give answer; shall we not staunchly stand

Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,

Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last lone land!

THE HARPY

_There was a woman, and she was wise; woefully wise was she;

She was old, so old, yet her years all told were but a score and three;

And she knew by heart, from finish to start, the Book of Iniquity._

There is no hope for such as I, on earth nor yet in Heaven;

Unloved I live, unloved I die, unpitied, unforgiven;

A loathèd jade I ply my trade, unhallowed and unshriven.

I paint my cheeks, for they are white, and cheeks of chalk men hate;

Mine eyes with wine I make to shine, that men may seek and sate;

With overhead a lamp of red I sit me down and wait.

Until they come, the nightly scum, with drunken eyes aflame;

Your sweethearts, sons, ye scornful ones--'tis I who know their shame;

The gods ye see are brutes to me--and so I play my game.

For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan;

And woman in a bitter world must do the best she can;

Must yield the stroke, and bear the yoke, and serve the will of man;

Must serve his need and ever feed the flame of his desire;

Though be she loved for love alone, or be she loved for hire;

For every man since life began is tainted with the mire.